“Yes.” His jaw clenches. “She needs to update Samira. Will call us tomorrow. I say we all get some rest tonight. We’re gonna need it.” He looks at me. “Rest, and eat.”

“I agree with the angry sorcerer. You need to rest.” Alice stares at me hard, and moves toward the kitchen. “I’ll go put something together.” William follows.

I feel Sel’s eyes on my back as I retreat to the bedroom.

The small, dust-covered lamp on the nightstand is too bright. Or it makes everything too real. I’m not sure. I swoop over and turn it off as soon as I return to the room, and that feels better. I fumble through the dark by the light shining through the cracked door of the bathroom.

When I go to the sink to wash my hands after using the restroom, I catch my reflection in the mirror—and suck in a shocked breath.

Whatever I looked like before William healed me must have been awful; the marks and scabbed-over wounds still ache and burn from Kizia’s claws. There are five finger-length purple bruises and red scars pressed into my brown skin. Like Kizia had dipped her open palms in red paint and held my face, making deadly art. My lips are chapped and split. My hair is beyond wild. It’s been days since I’ve been awake long enough to wash or style it. The curls feel dry. Parched. Like they could break at my touch. At the Institute, they didn’t even give me a hair tie, and I’ve definitely been sleeping on a plain cotton pillow. I look like a wreck and feel like worse.

I lower myself on the closed seat of the toilet, then lean over to turn the light off in here, too. I can’t face all of this in the light, not right now. Don’t want to see myself, my injuries, the evidence of all that has been done to me.

By myself in the quiet and darkness of the small, old bathroom, the tears finally come, along with shivering that won’t stop.

The Shadowborn attack on the Beast hadn’t rattled me like this. Maybe because it felt like almost any other Shadowborn attack: demons appear, we fight them. Lark was there, then Sel. I wasn’t alone, and the monsters hadn’t even gotten close enough to touch me.

It should probably be unsettling that the almost-dying part of my life isn’t new or jarring.

But this? Jonas had looked me in the eye and known my name. He knew that I’d been raised Onceborn, outside of this world and ignorant. He knew I’d only just become Crown Scion and that I was in over my head, playing catch-up to everyone else. And he’d invited a demon to murder me while he thought I was powerless and alone anyway.